Scope and Content

Administrative / Biographical History

Following the NHS (Scotland) Act 1972, Regional Hospital Boards, Boards of Management and Executive Councils were abolished in 1974 and responsibility for community health services was also transferred from local authorities. These bodies were replaced by fifteen regional health boards acting on behalf of the Secretary of State for Scotland. Lothian Health Board was made responsible for Midlothian, East Lothian and West Lothian. Today Lothian Health is housed in the old building of Deaconess Hospital in the Pleasance, Edinburgh.

Arrangement

Chronological within record classes

Conditions Governing Access

Public access to these records is governed by the UK Data Protection Act 1998, the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and the latest version of the Scottish Government Records Management: NHS Code of Practice (Scotland). Whilst some records may be accessed freely by researchers, the aforementioned legislation and guidelines mean that records with sensitive information on named individuals may be closed to the public for a set time.

Where records are about named deceased adults, they will be open 75 years after the latest date in the record, on the next 01 January. Records about individuals below 18 years (living or deceased) or adults not proven to be deceased will be open 100 years after the latest date in the record, on the next 01 January. Further information on legislation and guidelines covering medical records can be found on the LHSA webpage (http://www.lhsa.lib.ed.ac.uk/).

LHSA can support the use of records closed to public access for legitimate clinical, historical and genealogical research purposes. Please contact the LHSA Archivist for more details regarding procedures on how you can apply for permission to view closed records. Telephone us on: 0131 650 3392 or email us at lhsa@ed.ac.uk

Acquisition Information

Lothian Health Board

Note

Compiled by Mike Barfoot and Jenny McDermott using existing handlists

Other Finding Aids

Manual item-level descriptive list available

Accruals

Further accessions are expected

Related Material

As Lothian Health Board was the NHS governing body from 1974, most of the institutional categories of records relate to it in some way. But see especially: